Welcome to the Owens Eye blog
Behind the Eye
There are allot of people who ask me how I do what I do and what inspires me to get me to take the pictures I do. In this blog I hope to give an insight into Owens Eye. I hope to share some of the stories behind pictures and answer some of the more common questions I have been asked in the form of tips and advice.
Lost in Cyprus
Amazing Panoramic Sunset whilst lost in Cyprus
My wife and I were all set to go away on holiday to Cyprus earlier on this month, one of the things we wanted to do was tour the Island and find the less touristic places and see the Island as a Local. We have friends in Cyprus and the conversation of how to get around came up. Our friends informed us Cyprus has no satellite navigation coverage? But "its impossible to get lost". With that in mind we set out on our adventure armed with some local tourist maps and the unthinkable happened... That's right we got lost, but it turns out this was not a bad thing in the slightest. Getting lost sent us more of the beaten track then ever and allowed for some amazing photo opportunities that would not of been available to us had we stuck to the planned route.
I recommend you all try getting lost too the next time you away on holiday as you may find you're next best picture when trying to find you’re way back to the hotel.
For the rest of the picture from Cyprus please click Here
Shooting the Emirates Air Line at night
After noticing that the Emirates Air Line cable car system has been fitted with red Led lights, I came up with the idea to shoot the Air Line in the dark. I searched google and noticed there were very few pictures of the Air Line and out of those I could not find not one shot at night. I found that really surprising as the scene has all of the ingredients for an epic image.
For more photography of London and other cities please visit the City and Architecture
Cooking with photography - A brief introduction into the concept of how to shoot manual
Well this is a subject and a half and one I could talk about for a long time so I am just going to scratch the surface with it and let you all experiment from there.
Photography is like cooking in an oven. Cooking is all about getting the correct amount of heat to whatever you are trying to cook. Photography is all about getting the correct amount of light to 'light' your subject. The three things that are going to make a difference to your meal coming out burnt or not are 1 - the temperature, 2 - the time its left in the oven and 3 - how high up it is in the oven as heat rises. So understanding all that in photography terms I would liken Shutter speed to be the time it in the oven, aperture to be how hot the over is and ISO to be how close it is to the top of the oven. In the same way as cooking these 3 things control the exposure of a image. So still going with the cooking analogy if you put something to the top of the cooker at the same heat as it was at the bottom it is going to cook quicker if you do not turn down the temperature to compensate. if you do not compensate you meal will burn. Same with photography, if you turn up the ISO but don't tweak the shutter and/or the aperture then your image will be overexposed and the camera makes one or all of these for you when you shoot in any mode apart from manual or bulb.
But what happens if you like you meal a little overdone? Or maybe even rare? That is where manual mode can help as the camera's programmers don't always know what you want. It is also worth mentioning on a lot of modern DSLRs nowadays there is a little line with an indicator the that runs through the bottom of the view finder, consider this the cooking instructions advising you that you are getting closer to the settings it thinks you should use, if the indicator is in the middle of the slider, you would be following the recipe to the letter - correctly exposing according to the programmers of your particular brand of camera. If its towards the left that indicates the image would be the amount under exposed and the right is going into over exposed. Again to change exposure you would have to tweak the ISO, Shutter Speed and/or the aperture understand this concept you will be well on your way to going manual on any camera. There is a lot more to gaining more control of pictures than this brief introduction but this should give you an idea of how to start exposing your pictures manually.
Please leave any comments below. Happy Shooting.
Owen
Edinburgh - The Man who went up a mound and... Got wet
I recently found myself in Edinburgh for a weekend and like many photographers longed to get epic pictures of the rumored castle, landscapes and hills. On arriving to my hotel I was offered a choice of rooms, I was told I could have a superior room which was far nicer or a room with a castle view. Everything screamed superior but the photographer in me answered making me end up in a woeful room above a night club that although showed me the castle did not help too much due to it mostly being obscured by surrounding buildings. I dually took the shot and got back to wondering how much nicer the other room would of been. There is a mound towards the east of the city that I was sure was going to get me great results, so I set off in search of higher grounds. The closer I got to the mound the more I noticed the weather taking a turn for the worse, by the time I’d got to the top it was a full on monsoon with plenty of wind, rain and hail to help the shoot. After the descending the mound I really wanted to capture the castle in its full glory, a full moon presented itself unfortunately in the wrong direction so I had to work the scene to get the pictures I had came for. All in all it was a great trip and awesome place to shoot I can not wait to revisit to capture the city in good light.
Owen
For more pictures from the Edinburgh shoot click here
